"Win Tonight" is Still in Effect. Don't Expect Pat Murphy to Stretch His Starters in 2025.

[Matthew Trueblood]

Between last summer's trade deadline and their offseason shopping, the Brewers have thoroughly overhauled their starting rotation in the last year. Their manager, though, is still going to employ a quick hook. His reason is simple: it's how you win games.

Image courtesy of © Dave Kallmann / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

When the Brewers began the 2024 campaign, Pat Murphy had little choice but to be aggressive in the way he used his bullpen. Other than ace Freddy Peralta, he didn't have a starter he could feel comfortable allowing to work deep into a game with any regularity. Colin Rea and Joe Ross were perfect starters to face an opposing lineup twice, getting anywhere from 13 to 17 outs, but they rapidly became vulnerable to all kinds of trouble thereafter. It took a while for Murphy to learn what he had in Tobias Myers, and even then, he had to manage Myers's skill set and matchups with opponents carefully. Injuries kept the team wheeling through other options in their rotation, nearly all of which needed to be shielded from heavy usage because of their limitations in either prior workload or pitch mix.

That's not the case this year, by a longshot. The team still has Peralta, along with Myers, and they've held over Aaron Civale, whom they acquired last July. This winter, they not only targeted Nestor Cortes as part of the Devin Williams trade, but (partially thanks to Murphy's lobbying) signed accomplished veteran Jose Quintana as a free agent. The organization hopes they'll get Brandon Woodruff and Aaron Ashby back as full-fledged starters before June, and sometime before the All-Star break, any of DL Hall, Jacob Misiorowski, or Logan Henderson could be in play to fill in for anyone who gets hurt. There are a lot of good pitchers in the starting mix for this team this year—and that includes a few decorated hurlers who take pride in piling up innings and taking pressure off the bullpen. Will that change Murphy's approach to the decision at which he so excelled last year, about when to remove his starter?

No.

"Having 13 guys on your staff, and the way there’s just so many more available pitchers—so many more major-league pitchers, guys that are throwing 100, that can get outs even though they don’t know how to pitch yet," Murphy said. "There’s just so much more of that, that you’re able to mix and match that third time around, and get that guy out and get some fresh arm in. It’s turned into a young pitcher’s game, and there’s so much young pitching talent out there. The zone seems bigger to me than ever before, and pitchers definitely have the advantage back there."

Murphy explained that he hears from old friends and fellow baseball lifers all the time about getting starters to go deeper in games, and that it's the version of the game he longs for, himself. As the manager of a 2025 roster, though, he has a fiduciary duty to push the buttons that give his team the best chance to win—and it would be an abdication of that duty to pass up a chance to create a bad matchup for opponents, even if that chance comes quite early in the game.

"We’re not seeing that starter who dominates through seven like we always did. And we’re quicker to pull the trigger because these games are so meaningful, and so little separates the good from the not-so-good," he said. "So the strategies of the game have changed a little bit. The benches have changed—who’s on your bench, who’s not, all that has changed—so getting that matchup in the bottom of the fifth becomes a little more crucial in the game than people know. Data has shown us that. I’m not saying that pitchers shouldn’t go seven; pitchers should go seven. But if it comes at the expense of winning the game, then we don’t do it."

That, of course, invites the question of how best to determine when leaving the starter in the game comes at the expense of winning the game, and when it doesn't. For that matter, it leaves out the important question of how the decision to lift a starter from one game affects the next. From Murphy's vantage point, though, that question can only play a small role in his decision within a game. His ethos from 2024—"Win Tonight"—was not forged then. It goes as far back as his coaching career does, and it extends into 2025. When he sees a chance to win the game, he wants to seize it.

Murphy also noted that the team has carefully built a bullpen with more optionable arms than it had the last couple of years, the better to cycle through the last few pitchers in the relief corps when needed. That should allow the team to keep a fresh stable of hurlers, without compromising the caliber of pitching they get in the middle of games by stretching a tired starter. He also emphasized that the decision is not defined only by matchups, but by empirical (both technological and human) observation of when the starter begins to falter.

"We have the readings every inning, of how their stuff is trending, and when it trends way down, most of the time you’ve got a better chance of getting hit, especially by the top of the order," Murphy explained. "So if your stuff is trending way down and you’re at 84 pitches (or 74 pitches for that matter) and you’ve gotta go a third time around and you’ve got a loaded pen, you may [lift the starter]."

Murphy also mentioned the role the catcher can play in that, by providing feedback on how the pitcher is doing as the game progresses. Veteran backstop Eric Haase is always cognizant of that portion of his own job. While the coaching staff consults data on the pitcher's velocity, movement, release point, and location relative to targets, it's Haase's job to trust and relay the evidence of his own eyes.

"Normally, I can see that happening before the data gets there," Haase said. "You have the printouts and the TrackMan data and all those things, but I’m seeing hitters’ reactions in the box, and I can tell, ‘Ok, they’re starting to catch up to it, they’re starting to sit on certain pitches,’ things like that. It’s more of a feeling than noticing anything technical."

Haase said that while he understands his own responsibility to the manager and the coaches, it's also his job to be on the side of his pitcher—not to the extent of conspiring with them to keep them in the game, but by shaping his pitch calls to suit what's still working for them and what they're executing consistently, while staying true to the team's gameplan for each opposing batter. When the tension between those goals becomes noticeable, it's usually a sign that the time is ripe for a pitching change.

Organizationally, the Brewers work relentlessly to maintain enough comprehension of pitching and do good enough scouting, development and acquisition to amass depth. They believe they're doing it well enough to allow them to deploy their pitchers aggressively, which (in 2025) means maximizing the chances of winning each game, rather than aggressively pushing the usage of any individual. That doesn't mean the job is easy. On the contrary, it's an exquisitely delicate balance that must be struck, by the manager, the pitching coach, the catcher, the pitchers themselves, and the front office, and mistakes and breakage are inevitable. Lately, though, no team conducts that balancing act better than the Crew, and Murphy deserves some credit for that—even if, occasionally, it means a needling text or two.

"I just got a note today from a seven-time Cy Young winner," Murphy said, smirking. "His last line was, ‘Get those guys to go deeper in the game.’ At the expense of three runs? No. But I know what he’s saying."

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[wallus]

I think our rotation has the ability to go deeper into games. Part of the equation has to be the score of the game. If it's a tight game, you would be more willing to go to the bullpen. If not, let that starter eat more innings.

[MJD17]

"I just got a note today from a seven-time Cy Young winner," 

 

So, Roger Clemens. 

[Brian]

Tobias Myers left 3/15 Saturday’s split-squad start against the Angels with left oblique discomfort. Myers exited after 1 2/3 innings with a trainer. The hope is that the discomfort is temporary and there’s nothing structurally wrong with the 26-year-old, but there’s a good chance the Brewers will have Myers undergo imaging.